Klout overhauls its business model, but does it answer its critics?

Klout announced a radical overhaul to its scoring system, site design, and score transparency. But what is the real impact? Will it make a difference? I had a chance to speak to Klout CEO Joe Fernandez to try to determine the depth of the changes that were announced today … and answer the question on everybody’s mind — “Will my Klout score drop?”

Substantially more data points

Joe Fernandez of Klout

The new site will be introduced this week to a small set of users and will roll out in increments over the course of the next few weeks, according to Fernandez. Among the most important changes, Klout announced that it is beefing up the robustness of its scores by looking more broadly and deeply across social platforms:

By expanding the number of platforms and inputs being considered, Klout will analyze 12 billion data points per day (up from 1 billion) in an attempt to provide more accurate scores.

The company is providing slightly more consideration in its algorithm to what Klout calls the “real world” influence of LinkedIn and Wikipedia.

Tempering the vacation effect

A major complaint about Klout is that people’s finely-tuned scores drop whenever they go on vacation (and stop tweeting/posting). Fernandez said that Klout is giving more weight to relatively stable data inputs like LinkedIn profiles and Wikipedia entries that will help minimize the drop in people’s scores when they go on vacation. Scores will also be considered over a 90-day period instead of a 30-day period so that sudden inactivity will have a less dramatic impact on scores.

Transparency

Klout is adding a Kred-like feature called “Moments” that allows you to see which specific activities influence your score. Fernandez says this will help people “create better content” through constant feedback on what is providing the biggest actions from your networks.

Privacy

Klout has been caught up in some embarrassing privacy miscues, including showing profiles from minors on the site and re-introducing people into the Klout system who had opted-out. Fernandez said they have hired an outside privacy consultant for a “long-standing engagement” to perform audits and also that they have a full-time team overseeing privacy on a day-to-day basis. “We’ve learned our lesson on the mistakes we made,” he said. “Our goal is to lead the industry in matters of privacy protection.”

The Bieber versus Obama debate

An endless Klout complaint is that Justin Bieber, previously the only person with a perfect score of 100, has a higher score than the president of the United States. Fernandez believes that putting a higher weight on Wikipedia and LinkedIn will provide a fairer perspective of “real world” influence. And yes, the president now has a higher score than Justin Bieber.

Gaming the system

Fernandez told me they have designed new systems that will “turn the knob down” on people who are gaming their score instead of driving action by organically providing great content. “We will protect our system,” he said, “and reserve the right to take action if somebody is using tactics to simply raise a number artificially.” For example, he said that a person who created 100 re-tweets by sending out “100 pieces of crappy content” would be penalized compared to somebody who earned 100 re-tweets with one piece of great content.

Site Redesign

According to Fernandez, the new design, which has been in the works for a year, will “help you feel more recognized than judged” with more “emphasis on content rather than your score.” As you can see, the profile page has been dramatically re-designed, with a real emphasis on the the new “moments” feature:

The Klout mobile app

Fernandez admitted that the current Klout mobile app is “painfully crude.” However, an improved mobile app is in the approval process through Apple that will include the distribution of Klout Perks. This is expected to be available sometime this fall.

Do Klout Perks drive purchases?

While Klout Perks (free gifts generally provided to people with high Klout scores) can have the same short-term impact as coupons, Fernandez said they are getting closer to developing models that demonstrate influencer impact on purchase intent. He said that they are eliminating the noise and complexity of this work by working closely with several brands on a statistical analysis to determine a new “strength of influence score.” This score may be able to forecast buying behaviors based on patterns in an influencer’s audience.

The bottom line

Klout deserves credit for listening to their critics and attempting to knock down the problems one by one. Will it silence the critics? Of course not. If you hated Klout last week, you’ll probably hate Klout this week too. When it comes to Klout, logic rarely prevails.

I think the more important question is, has Klout improved its service offering with substantive changes? Yes and no.

Probably the biggest concern has been privacy. It appears that Klout has taken a no-nonsense stand on this, but time will tell if they can be a role model on this issue.

Likewise, Klout’s dead serious tone on people gaming their system is the right move. Any social platform that becomes popular eventually attracts corruption. Spammers almost killed Twitter in 2009 and Quora in 2010. Klout realizes that its ability to hold off the gamesters will be critical if they are to present legitimate “influencers” to clients.

On “transparency” they seem to have stepped up to requests with the “Moments” feature, although Kred appears to still provide more detail in this area. If you have the time to study it, this feature is useful and provides insight into their algorithm. The company also provided a detailed list of factors that impact your Klout score.

By quadrupling the inputs to personal scores, the scope of their influence assessment far surpasses any rival. But it also adds substantially to the complexity of the algorithm and creates opportunities for things to go wrong. The changes will not significantly impact the fact that a Klout score will still be weighed more toward Twitter- and Facebook-centric activities.

Most of the other changes announced today — emphasizing content over scores through their design, minimizing the vacation effect, and the “Obama over Bieber” change — are simply window dressing to moderate criticisms, in my opinion. It’s not going to make any real difference in their business model or the scores of the everyday social media user.

At the end of the day, Klout, Kred, and PeerIndex only measure one thing: Can a person create content on the social web that gets shared and elicits a reaction? That of course is a legitimate source of power on the web today in this Era of the Citizen Influencer where everyone can publish and have a voice.

But after several years of effort, Klout is still missing out on a real gold mine of online influence — blogs and YouTube videos. These are the forums where rich content is created, discussed, and shared. Today, Klout scores are impacted only by activity on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Google+, Klout, and Wikipedia. You can also connect YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress, Lastfm and flickr, but they don’t compute in your score.

Will Klout’s announced changes make a difference? I think they have taken steps in the right direction, but the only meaningful answer will come from its customers — the real ones who give them money, not us. Can Klout deliver effective incentive programs that nurture powerful word of mouth influencers and create brand advocates? The company seems to be on a roll, creating 400 influencer campaigns in the past 12 months, but time will tell.

And, oh by the way …

Will your Klout score drop?

(Drum roll) Probably not. Klout CEO Joe Fernandez said that the changes to the system are substantial, but only about 10 percent of user scores are projected to drop, compared to 40 percent in the Klout-pocalypse of November 2011.

I would be eager to hear your views of these changes, but fair warning — I’m weary of comments with no more rationale than “Klout is stupid.” If that’s where your head is, read this short explanation of social scoring systems before you comment! Thanks!

Disclosure: I have never taken a Klout Perk or any form of compensation from Klout. My publisher McGraw-Hill worked with both Klout and PeerIndex to offer Return On Influence as a Perk in the spring of 2012 and there may have been a small indirect benefit in terms of additional book sales.

I would agree with your analysis here. My only hesitation was the “get 10 friends to join klout in order to see the new design sooner” stipulation. I dislike things like that, regardless of the person/business doing it. If they want to include real life influence, they’ll need to poll my children. I suspect my score would plummet.

http://www.businessesGROW.com/blog Mark W Schaefer

I don’t like shenanigans like that either.

As far as kids, i often joke in my speeches that parental influence among teens is well-documented as “zero!” : )

The Baum Group

Good news Mark… thanks for sharing! Waiting to see the outcome of these changes

Dr. Rae

Good news Mark… thanks for sharing! Waiting to see the outcome of these changes
Had some issues with logging in today ;( Plan on contacting Disqus!

http://twitter.com/poandpo Poandpo

We were increasing our score over months, than it felt to 0 and we asked Klout why – they deleted our account. Since we are publishers, not some sex site, we find it very odd. They are very arrogant. So, don’t care about Klout anymore.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

Thanks for the feedback Dr. Rae!

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

Obviously I can’t explain this but my observation is that Klout got hot and was way under-staffed to handle quickly-changing customer service issues. There have been lots of stories like yours and I can certainly understand your disappointment. Thanks for commenting.

http://jureklepic.com/ Jure KLEPIC

Mark this year scores are not dropping but they are increasing, for example from 66 to 82 with no explanation behind. They aslo make a note on the accounts as announcement that changes will take place in next few days and that you will not be able to see history of your score… This is not transparency, you should be able to see historical jump. One things that missing in all of the tools not just Klout is the fact that they only measure awareness and not influence. Still i dont see any indicators how this impact behavioral change. But yes lets give them another try out Thx for sharing

http://twitter.com/cspenn Christopher Penn

I think it still misses the key points Tom Webster highlighted in his discussion about the quantification of authority, but neglect of the message. It’s 1/3 of influence only.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

I know you read my book and are familiar with my view that the ability to publish and move content that creates a reaction is a legitimate way to accrue influence on the web. Are you more influential after a HugffPo piece, for example? Yes, because you are moving your content to a larger audience. That is what all of these platforms are trying to measure, essentially. Your relative ability to do just that. I think that is an important thing to try to measure on the web today. Influence has changed. Influence has been democratized.

The whole transparency thing is not meaningful to me. Their algorithm is the heart of their business model. Why should they tell anybody anything about it? Nobody is entitled to know Coke’s secret formula or the Colonel’s special recipe or how an investor values their stocks. I don;t feel entitled to know how Klout comes up with their score. I think the whole argument for transparency is silly from a business perspective.

Nice to see you back in the comment section Jure.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

I enjoyed Tom’s post but I don’t think it negates the potential usefulness of a score like this as an indicator of a relative ability to move content. A credit score does not indicate your ability or willingness to pay back a loan, but it is a useful shortcut for companies to make a decision about something. That’s the way I look at these social scores. Very narrow in scope, but a useful indicator nonetheless. Thanks for sharing your perspective Christopher!

Looking forward to seeing the outcome of the changes. It would be interesting to understand if/how the Klout score reflects actual change in others. It is logical to assume that as your reach and exposure increases, your potential to influence others increases as well. This does not mean that you have actually changed the behavior or actions of the people you interact with. I see the Klout score as more of an indicator of the potential of an individual to influence changes (behavioral or cognitive) in others.

Kare Anderson

I agree with Cindy – these kinds of “nudges” may meaty Klout’s goal of getting more participants yet feel “hard sell” and not adding value to the core mission of a trustworthy, somewhat accurate of our social media=based clout

http://twitter.com/webby2001 Tom Webster

Adding Wikipedia, among other things, has caused my score to vault to 72. Thanks, NY Rangers coach and former star Tom Webster!

Amy Howell

Great post Mark! I do like the concept of fairness & equal footing for all so some measure of real influence is good & I applaud Klout for admitting mistakes, learning from them & listening ~ which clearly they are. I think the debate gets hot when you start to define what real influence online is. And yes, influence online may not translate to influence in the real world. I know a few “social media experts” who are unemployed and waiting tables for a living which is fine if that’s what you want to do and I know the tough economy is to blame for some of it. Real influence to me is my ability to get my clients to go in a successful direction. When my clients make more money, I can too. And of course my kids would say …..ha! Actually my kids dig social media & they are getting it early! But, they don’t know what klout is yet! Fun times!

Excellent post Mark. I am pleased with the Klout Changes today. +16 on my score so far. This Summer I have been making an effort to guest blog on bigger and better sites. Makes sense if that helped my score.

More to come!

cheers,

Pete

http://www.linkedin.com/in.donemitchell DonMedia

What Klout really needs to do is come clean as to what it’s business model really is. Hint: It’s not a metric; it’s a marketing program leveraging Klout Perks in the hopes of driving buzz.

Cindy C is right on in her reservations about spamming your friends to get early access. I value my contacts, followers and friends too highly to spam them like that.

I’m not saying this because my score went down either. It went up. Way up. There is no way on this earth I’m that influential about anything, so they still have a ways to go to sort it out.

http://www.pookyshares.com/ Pooky Hesmondhalgh

Thanks for this Mark. I was most puzzled to find my Klout score had jumped 15 when I logged into the app earlier to hand out some +K and your post goes some way to explaining why.

Your post has me convinced That Klout is headed in the right direction and will become a more credible measure again. What I’d like to see is a guide to what different Klout scores mean and what is ‘good’?

My Klout score is 71 I have no idea if that’s good, bad or indifferent.

kevin kirkpatrick

Nice post Mark. I have always given Klout credit for at least swinging the bat. When we think about it, how new is this technology. One thing that still perplexes me regarding the Bieber Obama effect: Both are highly influential but do they really drive behavior on FB and Twitter. How many times does the president actually have an engaged interaction with a follower? And what about the influence of those 24 million JB followers?? Twitter is really just a press release for a lot of the big names……

http://joshuawilner.com/ Josh

I am not a Klout hater but I hear things like ‘strength of influence’ score and my eyes roll. It is like when people talk about ‘content marketing’- it comes off as marketing gibberish.

The power of simplicity works. Tell us what the problem is and how your solutions to the problem helps us.

Klout needs to come up with an easy way to explain how the new system is superior to the old one and they need to do it in a way that doesn’t sound like they are trying to BS people.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

One of the my favorite parts of Return On Influence is the story of how Fernandez founded the company. The thing died six times but he was obsessed with the idea and never gave up. It’s an inspirational story because of his aggressiveness and risk-taking but that does not necessarily translate to good marketing. I agree with you Kare.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

Many thanks for the kind words.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

The content I created today created a reaction in you. You responded to a blog post. Perhaps you also tweeted it or posted it to Facebook or LinkedIn. Those are discreet, measurable reactions. So, to the extent that a company could quantify those reactions over time, you could measure one small sliver of my impact on you, right? That’s where this is heading. Thanks Mark.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

That would mean your score is the same as mine. Damn. All that stuff I wrote in that book — forget it, obviously I was wrong.

Just kidding of course Tom. I’m glad you received your proper Klout.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

Thanks for adding your thoughts on this Amy. Great to see you back in the comment section!

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

Thanks Peter. I’m glad that has been working out for you!

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

I don’t think Klout has hidden anything about its business model. If you’re interested in learning more about this (in detail!) I think you would enjoy my book Return On Influence. Thanks Don.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

A rule of thumb I have heard is that the world average Klout score is 19 (or used to be before today!). “30″ will get you some pretty goof Perks and a score of 50 or above would put you in the 90th percentile. Again, that could have all changed after today but that is what i have been told. Hope that helps.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

I have not analyzed this issue but when I was working on the book, Klout told me that Bieber’s infliuence is real and amazing. When he tweets, he can make his fans take action. I would assume the president has some influence in that regard too : ) Thanks for commenting Kevin.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

Thanks for adding your voice to the discussion Josh.

http://www.atlanticwebworks.com/ Kristen Daukas

Mine jumped almost 10 points today. Glad to see that they’re taking in “real world” actions like Kred has done. One thing that I would love to see Klout, Kred, etc do is allow for multiple log-ins/identities. I spend as much time on my personal blog as I do on my business one and while both “me’s” are scored individually, it would be better for me if I were able to combine both into the same score. Should I have lumped them all under the same “me” from the beginning? Maybe, but now it’s too late as I’ve spent a lot of time building each following. Does this even make sense to anyone but me?

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

Yes, it makes sense. That has been a common complaint. I’m sure guessing they’ll get to that eventually!

Thanks for the insight Mark, It’s too early to tell, however I like what I see and the Moments should help us with what matters to our audiences. BTW, I have the new Klout app on my iPhone, it’s a robust app. You can review profiles, give +k’s and GUI is much cleaner.

http://fingercandymedia.com/ Jessica Northey

HA. my Klout score dropped from 80ish to 73 but my “influences others” shot up to 101K. I just DONT get this. LOL. I really don’t care cause it doesn’t mean I am gonna help a client sell any more music on itunes or concert tix, but i just don’t understand. at all.

Mitch Mitchell

I killed my Klout account last year and I see no reason to change even reading this stuff. Blogs and YouTube need to be in there, and adding Wikipedia when most people have no presence there is illogical from where I sit. And LinkedIn job titles… what’s that about? Does it mean if you list yourself as CEO of your company that you’ll be rated higher than if you say you’re a director in a company?

And I didn’t see this article addressing the real reason I left, that being how it ranks interactions with other people you talk to in social media, determining that if you talk to someone with a lower score that your score should decrease; please. Wouldn’t you think that if people are talking both would benefit in some way?

Nah; I think I’m still better off.

http://www.soniawrites.com/ Sonia

My klout score has increased substantially since I signed up.

Kristin

It feels like everyone wanted to jump on the bandwagon today and recap exactly what Klout posted on their blog, except that is for you. Thanks for providing an insightful and accurate look at the changes and how they impacted the current scores. I think the reality is Klout and Kred are trying to manage/track a lot of intangibles and with the increase of social media it will take some time and a lot of trial and error that evolves to get it right. I look forward to experiencing the evolution of the system.

http://thenovel.me/ Pavel Konoplenko

So I went up 9, which is cool I guess. As far as the updates that rolled out, it’s definitely a step in the right direction, but definitely far from perfect. They have a long way to go, but it’s great to see them listening to the community and try to improve.

Like you mentioned, blogs are a great indicator of influence but they haven’t fully captured that area yet. Maybe they should look into incorporating Disqus and Livefyre, as there are great influential (and self-policing) communities build around many blogs – such as this one. That can be next maybe.

There’s a lot of apathy and even undeserved antagonism towards Klout and other “influence-measuring” services. I sometimes think people forget the massive undertaking that these services are doing. Before social media, and the Internet as whole, measuring influence was never something we did. Each individual person may have had an idea of certain people’s influence to them, but that number of people was limited; certainly not the thousands of new people you can potentially come across daily on the web. Furthermore, our idea of influence was always murky, even before Klout – the reason it’s getting such a bad name is that it’s one of the first to try to figure it out. Before Klout, it was impossible to even consider handing anyone a number centered on “influence” and thus people weren’t arguing as much.

Ultimately, I think most of the arguments stem from people’s inability to standardize the very definition of clout or influence. The best thing I can tell people about what Klout does, is that it measures your Klout (for whatever that’s worth). Can the introduction of platforms like Klout redefine our very idea of what influence is?

Maybe, only time can tell. But until then, I’ll give you a tenuous sports analogy.
Before the 3-point line was introduced in the NBA, having a good 3-point shot was meaningless. After the 3-point line was introduced, guys like Reggie Miller and Ray Allen were able to flourish and become All-Stars and Hall of Famers. Is Klout the 3-point of influence, helping add a new definition of what it means to be influential.

chrisldiaz

I think the updates will definitely move Klout into a better position as to the legitimacy of the service they are providing. In other words, I think (hope) that people start looking at it as a useful tool, rather than just some novelty, which I think is what most people see it as today. There’s an enormous potential for marketers with Klout but I think it needs to legitimize itself a bit more before folks start taking it seriously. This update is a good step towards that.

toddwheatland

Great read, thanks Mark. I haven’t been online for nearly 2 weeks and my score still had a healthy kick (+15), so hopefully that’s indicative of the vacation equalization. I still don’t know how close they’re going to get to something that’s a true indicator, but I admire them (and anyone else) who’s having a go.

A legitimate view MItch. Thanks for contributing to the discussion. i see where the “who you talk to” bit seems crass but I can see how Klout would rate you as more influential if your content is re-tweeted by influential people. I don’t mindfully target my communications to “influencers” — I talk with everybody — but I can see where Klout is coming from in theory.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

Thanks for the kind words Kristin. Much appreciated!

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

Love that analogy Pavel. You make a lot of great points (as usual my friend!) but I’ll pick up on one in particular — the angst around Klout. Here is one thing about the company that I think is fascinating and overlooked — They are iterating in public.

When I started my company, I made a lot of mistakes. When I tried something and failed, generally nobody knew anything about it but me. But this is a weird scenario where literally every tweak and change they make is being dissected and scrutinized in public. There is no way they can test something enough that it is going to replicate the reaction of millions of users. So, they are an open test bed. To me, that would be a nerve-wracking situation, and it probably is! But if you look at it from this perspective, it’s quite an interesting business story isn’t it? Thanks again for the always thought-provoking contribution!

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

I think the tools are still crude in many respects. But as marketers we have to keep focused on the TREND, and the long-term potential, as you say. That is what the critics are overlooking. There is absolutely an opportunity to tie conversations to buying behavior here. You will be able to assign a specific dollar value to certain influencers. It is already happening. From a marketing perspective, that is historically important. The people who don’t see the potential in this probably would have said “Google search sucks” in 1999. You have to look at where it’s GOING, not where it is right now. Thanks Chris.

Nice analysis Mark. The new Moments feature is very nice. Along with Obama/Bieber @W_Buffett finally has a Klout score in the proper range. From what I read, the next two platforms to come on-line will be YouTube and Tumblr. YouTube certainly makes sense. Tumblr may be related to accessibility. I know it’s growing but what I see there mostly is the sharing of photos without proper attribution (I happen to watch that because I’ve been speaking and writing about Pinterest).

Based on your conversation with Joe, how would he feel about calling this revision New Klout. Of course then we get into semantics like “New New Twitter”.

http://brianvickery.com/ Brian Vickery

I know they’ve been an understaffed organization trying to put out fires, but I’m still surprised they haven’t incorporated Disqus and Livefyre…and even Quora…into the algorithm. Glad to see they are putting more weighting on LinkedIn activity; however, I do find myself engaging more people in the comments section of blogs…thus potentially influencing reader reactions.

Same goes for review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Amazon and even Google Local (was Places). Input on review sites definitely influences buying decisions. That’s a huge reason why we include them in the Pulse Analytics data collections…because brands want to pick up on brand protection/advocacy opportunities as quickly as they can. Incorporating them into Klout could help brands find those advocates/Citizen Influencers more quickly.

http://twitter.com/cspenn Christopher Penn

Very true. I ended up writing more about some of our advanced influence conversations on my blog today. A credit score does indicate a sense of ability (means) to repay a loan, however. It’s flawed, but it does work. A Klout score perhaps does the same in the ability to move content, but only if it’s on target. A dollar’s a dollar, but influence about a topic area doesn’t translate nearly as well.

http://socialmediasun.com/ Adam Justice

Yeah, people like Obama and Bieber don’t have to engage with fans to influence them. I wrote an article that was critical of Bieber jumping the gun on a radio show host, and I heard about it – they are the definition of bias, evangelist, cult. Those kids track hashtags like we only wish social media people would. It’s ridiculous. I’d say Bieber is more influential than Obama when it comes to online influence.

http://twitter.com/dangerdubs David Wells

My score shot up from 51 to 65 (and apparently, I was close to 70 at one point). I still don’t quite understand it, though a 65 Klout score looks much better on a resume/LinkedIn profile than a 51. I’m not too sure it is closer to measuring actual influence, but I hope it makes me some more money.

http://twitter.com/sydcon_mktg Jennifer Devitt

I am wondering, is Klout still opt out? The reason I wonder is that after reading this post I looked at 2 minors in our family that are on Twitter…and BOTH have Klout scores w/o signing up for Klout! I opted out last year, so I really dont know if this changed or not.

http://twitter.com/higginbomb Chris Higginbotham

I admit that this is anecdotal and not based on a broad sample, but it looks to me like everyone just received a four-point increase in Klout score. So far, it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but I’m anxious to see what else awaits.

Jen Zingsheim

I’m really pleased to see the “vacation effect” addressed. That, to me at least, was the most evident criticism that it measured volume and activity, not influence. Also glad to see that the President has a higher Klout score than a Canadian pop singer. They are moving in the right direction–BUT I still have issues with companies hiring based on these scores. That’s more of a problem with poor application than with the tool itself.

http://thenovel.me/ Pavel Konoplenko

Thanks for the great content for me to think about! I sometimes feel that people want to complain without giving credit where credit is due. Klout is attempting to do something unprecedented. Too many people dismiss it and say it sucks and point to the example of Justin Bieber. Yes that’s a fair point, but it’s a very shallow point and not well-thought out.

http://twitter.com/juliaserafina Julia Serafina

Hi Mark, I had been so close to ditching my Klout profile but with the new changes (and a +24 increase in my score) I am willing to trial the new scoring system. At least there has been an attempt to make changes – that is a good start. I look forward to real world achievements being included/measured but I still question if it is truly possible to quantify influence. Either way, I am all for a service like Klout making an attempt.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

I read your post and respectfully disagree. If you read Return On Influence it will open your eyes and bring clarity to what is being measured and why.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

I don’t think that name is cool enough. Remember, they are based in San Francisco so it would have to be Nu Klout or better yet, nuKlout. No need to thank me. : )

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

I swear I remember them announcing something about Disqus but it seems to have dropped from the radar screen.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

I like a guy with a proper set of values!

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

I think if you are on Twitter, you will be on Klout. It’s public information and Klout is just taking data from the fire hose. Facebook is private though. That’s where the privacy issue happened last year.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

I know of a few people who had a drop, but who knows, you could be right. It may take a few days for the thing to settle.

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

I appreciate your perspective Jen. Thanks for commenting!

http://abdallahalhakim.tumblr.com/ Abdallah Al-Hakim

you are correct about their supposed Disqus plan but nothing has moved on that front in a long time

http://twitter.com/gisanders G.I. Sanders

I definitely need to dive into it, cause from everything I’ve seen from Klout since inception my score is always impacted by what engages my network the most, regardless what the content contains

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

Thanks for adding your voice to the dialogue Julia.

http://twitter.com/TheChiefAlien HowieG

It seems the only network Klout is accessing without permission is Twitter. In my experience running a brand page for a client 65-70% of all facebook pages are locked down private. And with 90% of the population unaware of what Klout is I just don’t see them accessing enough data to make proper conclusions. I mean Klout really is known by marketers….and big brands vs small business and that is pretty much it. And with only 7% of the US tweeting actively each day it is very underwhelming. All influence is underwhelming…and still can be gamed.

I am curious how this will play out but for now Klout is more a place I go to give +Ks for the funny stuff. BTW can’t find you in Klout. So can’t give you a +K in Hula Hooping!

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

I’ve had a number of people tell me they can;t find me on Klout. The irony is not lost on me : )

http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark W. Schaefer

Of course he is. That’s why I don;t think Klout really needs to make any apologies for it.

This is very great and enjoyable to read. I am a huge believer of the topics blogged about. I also enjoy reading the replies, but I notice that alot of people should stay on topic to try and add something to the original blog post. I would also ask everyone to bookmark this page to your most used website to help spread the word. Thanks Fast Business Loans

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You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow.
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-Mark Schaefer